Indigenous Yoruba psychiatry

Prince, Raymond (Raymond H.)

essay

Indigenous Yoruba psychiatry

magic, faith and healing • New York • Published In 1964 • Pages: 84-120

By: Prince, Raymond (Raymond H.).

Abstract
The author, a research psychiatrist, has applied the anthropological concept of culture to his analysis and description of traditional Yoruba psychotherapy and theories of mental disturbance. In discussing the etiology, symptomatology, diagnosis, and treatment of Yoruba psychopathology, he eschews the claims that Western types of psychological medicine are a sefficacious as its physical medicine in any primitive context. Psychotherapeutic methods and principles are culture bound, inasmuch as each culture determines the form and content of its disease complex. Having done field research among the Yoruba, the author relies heavily both on case histories of native healers' accounts and on his own observations of patient behavior in native treatment centers in order to clarify many of the points made about traditional definitions of psychic disease and its treatment. The author quite lucidly relates supernatural theories of disease to the Yoruba diety complex and ancestor worship, and how failure at spirit propitiation and self purification or expiation will activate disease-bearing sorcery and witchcraft. On social organization and structure of therapy (healer-patient relationship, family and kin religious controls, etc.), the author expounds on the points originally made by Bascom on the medical functions of Ife divination and the Orisa religious cult associations. Although this article is more descriptive than theoretical in purpose, it does suggest that Yoruba psychiatry is functionally dependent on other Yoruba social institutions.

Personality disorders

Magical and mental therapy

Congregations

Shamans and psychotherapists

Burial practices and funerals

Sacred objects and places

Conception

Prayers and sacrifices